


Lady Mercy Won't Be Home Tonight

by deathmallow



Series: The Snark Knight [2]
Category: Highlander (Movies), Highlander: The Series, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Crossover, Gen, giftfic, kind of cracktastic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year's Games means there can be only one, and as ever, Haymitch Abernathy is sure it won't be either of his two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady Mercy Won't Be Home Tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bamfdoll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bamfdoll/gifts).



> For bamfdoll, a belated birthday giftfic crossover of The Hunger Games/Highlander. 
> 
> "There can be only one", fights to the death, and the Game vs the Games? It had to be done. I apologize. ;) (Also, in my head, Duncan is pretty much Finnick, Methos is Haymitch, and Amanda is Johanna. Just sayin'.)
> 
> Title is from the lyrics of Queen's "Hammer to Fall". All screwups of Highlander canon are my fault.
> 
> Trigger warnings for non-explicit mentions of death, murder, execution, and sexual slavery/forced prostitution.

“Archery. Wonderful,” Haymitch said dryly, looking at the small, dark-haired newly Immortal woman standing there in front of him. “That would be fantastic if this was the Olympics or a Robin Hood flick. Sadly, sweetheart, your little William Tell bit is just about useless here. You shoot an Immortal straight in the heart, you get a few seconds before he’s up again and _very pissed off_ with you besides. Great delay tactic, maybe, but you’ve gotta be close enough to get in and make the final kill before they come to again.” He gave a nonchalant shrug. “And at that close range, I repeat, _your bow is pretty much fucking useless_ against an Immortal blade.”

She glowered at him, obviously not pleased that what she’d hoped would be her trump card had just been thrown out the window. Yeah, well, and if life was fair, these Games would never happen. “ _Ever_ handled a sword?” he asked wearily.

“We had a week of fencing in high school gym,” the blond man volunteered, giving her an anxious glance. Two kids from Bumfuck, West Virginia, by their profiles that had been slid under Haymitch’s door this morning to announce his two tributes had been assigned. Obvious as anything Blondie here had a crush on Surly, and just as obvious that Surly was a hundred percent clueless to that fact. Graduated college last year, might have gone on to a nice life together if Blondie could ever speak up, but for the fact that Snow’s Watchers had picked up the buzz telling them they were two little pre-Immortals.

“Well,” he said, reaching for a bottle of whiskey and taking a hefty swallow. Unfortunately, or fortunately, along with never ageing past his mid-twenties, apparently he couldn’t poison his liver with it. “If they didn’t explain it to you right after they stabbed you to bring on your first death—“

“We know we’re these…’Immortals’,” Surly snapped. “And there’s something called the Game where we have to kill other Immortals? Or maybe it’s the Games?”

“There’s the Game,” Haymitch corrected her, “and then there’s _the Games_. Very original, I know. The Game, that’s been going on for thousands of years, ‘cross the world. Now, _the Games_ , that’s the happy circumstance you find yourself in now. We’re in the middle of Siberia. Miles and miles and miles from anywhere, so far off the grid nobody’s gonna find this who doesn’t know about it. Don’t even think of escaping, or your friends and family are dead—and they’re not gonna come back like you did. They’ve got twenty-four Immortals their Watchers have captured, every year. Some volunteer just for shits and giggles and to get ahead in the Game by the power of a few more kills. They’re usually old hands. A lot, like you two, are ones they identified and induced.”

“Killed,” Blondie said bluntly. Haymitch had a vision of him waking up terrified here in Snow’s compound, bewildered at how he was still alive after being murdered.

“If you like,” he shrugged. “I’m supposed to be your mentor. So they tell me.” The bastardization of that infuriated almost any Immortal roped into it—the nearly sacred trust of being that first teacher to a new Immortal, often for years, so that they’d do honor to the Game, was something that led to many bonds and friendships and actually made the Game all that harder. It reaffirmed their humanity against the unavoidable demands of the Game. Without those ties, they were just animals slaughtering each other indiscriminately.

That mentorship and all its weight was reduced down to a few days of trying to teach scared new Immortals how to die with some grace and dignity in the arena to the cheers of the rich bastards who’d paid to come watch them die. The more deaths that could be inflicted before the final death by beheading, the more entertaining it was. The arenas were usually full of all sorts of creativity there.

He’d been considered one of the most powerful captive Immortals—receiving the accumulated power of forty-seven slain Immortals in the arena rather than the usual twenty-three. He carried seventy-one in reality from those Games, given the kills made by some of the Immortal tributes before they were taken into the arena, but he wasn’t going to tell the public that. He told only other Immortals, who understood the burden of all those people in his mind, the jumbled memories, their final moments. The aficionados of the Games still whispered in excitement about those Games, the 50th anniversary edition, and how spectacular they’d been. No wonder they gave him the worst tributes every year—they kept assuming _somehow_ his power was supposed to work magic on them in such a short time. Yeah, not unless one of them beheaded him and took his Quickening, though from her darkening expression, Surly might be thinking about it.

These kids knew nothing, and the reality of combat was going to hit hard. At least a couple centuries ago, even a dirt-poor Scots foot soldier like him had known how to handle a sword. Even Johanna Mason and Finntan Odair—Finntan Nicholas, “Finnick” to his fans—dying their first deaths a hundred and fifty years ago, had come in with some skills: Finnick with a spear and a fishing knife, and Johanna was as wicked with an axe in combat as she must have been as a lumberjack in the Minnesota wilderness. These kids probably knew how to work computerized espresso machine and order shit off eBay, but not a damn thing about how to fight, how to survive the Immortal world.

Didn’t know a damn thing about what would happen if they survived either. So convenient that Immortals couldn’t sire or bear children. Made them very popular sex toys among Snow’s crowd who came every year to these Games, like it was their annual pilgrimage to some holy event. Fucking an Immortal was practically a badge of honor among them. He wondered who they had as leverage. So long as any Immortal had those they loved, they were vulnerable. It had been years since he’d watched Briar die in the arena. Been together for the better part of two hundred years, and he’d thought they would be together for eternity. He could feel her sometimes, inside him still, and her presence was one of the few welcome ones. The big blond Viking woman who’d slain Briar, and whom he’d killed in turn, much less so. Maybe he no longer had many mortals dear to him to threaten, but Snow could casually chop another Immortal every year, given a potential new replacement. The fact he didn’t was considered mercy, and he knew that fact of his only friends’ continued existence would keep Haymitch in line. 

No, chances were these two were dead. He’d wager as usual, the supposedly “random drawing” had assigned the experienced Immortals and the freelancers who’d volunteered for this madness, to the traditionally victorious mentors. Mags, whom according to the story bandied around in the fan circles, supposedly had fought with Boudicca herself, was always popular as a mentor. She’d been two hundred years too late for Boudicca, in actuality, but then again, they called him “Haymitch” and claimed he fought and died his first death at Culloden Moor. Didn’t matter what the truth was—the power and privilege of the crowd that loved the Games felt free to write their own truth. 

They always made sure there were some veterans in there so it wasn’t just clumsy new Immortals fumbling with their swords. If they ever caught the oldest Immortal out there, five thousand year old Methos, though he might just be a myth anyway, that would be a Games frenzy like no other. 

One year, it had pleased Snow to have induced the immortality of a twelve-year-old girl, promptly assigned to him. She just kept crying and pleading to go home. Identifying and making child Immortals were practically a taboo among their kind, but for Snow, there were no rules. He’d almost wanted to end her before the arena began just out of sheer mercy. If it wouldn’t have gotten mortals killed by it, her family included, he might well have done it.

He had the thought sometimes that Snow was one clever bastard of an Immortal—he was manipulating the Game to his own ends on a grand scale. He’d corrupted Watchers to bring fresh Immortals and pre-Immortals to him every year. He was using his own Games to force the great Game, winnowing down the field and hastening the inevitable conclusion. He profited in wealth and power every year by tapping into the bloodlust, and sexual lust, of some of the world’s most powerful people by offering them something as exotic as this and demanding they keep it secret and exclusive. He kept the surviving Immortals he’d managed to snare neatly in line with fear. Someday, Haymitch didn’t doubt he’d have to face Johanna and Blight and Mags and Finnick and Brutus and all the rest in one last grand Games, and that when it was over, Snow would be right there to take the head of the sole survivor.

But not this year. This year he had Surly, “Katherine Everdeen”, and Blondie, “Peter Mellark”, and once again he was going to try to pull off the impossible and make two hopeless cases appealing enough to the fans, and well-trained enough, to survive. 

“So help us. Give us some advice,” Surly insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.

He smirked, taking another drink, “Stay alive, and don’t lose your head.”


End file.
